As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Cooling fans are typically employed within the chassis enclosure of an information handling system to cool components operating within the information handling system chassis enclosure. Certain types of information handling systems, such as precision workstations, may employ multiple different cooling fans with a different cooling fan unit positioned to cool a different component type within the chassis enclosure of the information handling system, such as CPU, memory, hard disk drive (HDD), PCI cards and power supply.
In the past, thermal tables have been provided in system memory that specify fan speed RPM values for each respective cooling fan of an information handling system at a given temperature (or alternatively at a given range of sensed temperature) within the chassis enclosure. The specified fan speed (e.g., RPM) values and baseline temperature response of such a thermal table are pre-defined based on thermal engineering and default thermal loadings for different system components, and are selected to help ensure sufficient cooling of the components of a given default system configuration that includes a specific default number and type/s of system components. As the sensed operating temperature within the system chassis increases or decreases, the fan speed of each of the given system cooling fans is automatically increased or decreased according to a pre-defined linear (X-Y) relationship of the thermal table that specifies increasing fan speed with increasing temperature. For some notebook computers, the pre-defined fan speed values of a thermal table are specified as temperature ranges, such that as the sensed operating temperature within the system chassis increases from a value lying within a first lower pre-defined temperature range of the thermal table to a value lying within a second higher pre-defined temperature range of the thermal table, the fan speed of each of the given system cooling fans is automatically increased from a respective pre-defined lower fan speed corresponding to the lower temperature range to a respective pre-defined higher fan speed specified corresponding to the higher temperature range. In either case, when sensed system temperature increases from a lower pre-defined temperature to a higher pre-defined temperature range, the speeds of all system cooling fans increase according to the pre-defined thermal table cooling fan speed values.
In an attempt to allow a user to control cooling fan speed to compensate for increased thermal loads that are higher than the default thermal loads of a default system configuration, user-selectable thermal tables (USTTs) have been employed. Such a USTT contains a finite number of different pre-defined user-selectable fan speed modes expressed as respective different thermal tables that each define a different fan speed policy as a function of sensed temperature range. Each of these user-selectable modes includes a different set of specified fan speed values for the individual cooling fans of the system as a function of sensed system temperature range. During system setup (at the time of system boot prior to booting the operating system), a system user can select a different (non-default) fan speed mode from the USTT in order to increase or decrease the cooling fan speed response for all system cooling fans across the board as a function of sensed temperature range. For example, in a given information handling system configuration having a heavy Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) card thermal load (i.e., that is greater than the default system PCI card thermal load), a user may choose a more aggressive (or higher speed) pre-defined USTT mode that increases the cooling fan speed (RPM) of all system cooling fans for each given sensed temperature range. However, selecting a USTT fan speed mode that results in higher pre-defined fan speeds for all system cooling fans at each given temperature range causes system acoustics to suffer due to loud cooling fan noise from all system cooling fans operating at a higher speed.